The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 10

by Maxim Jakubowski

  She was dressed again as she had been the night before, her complexion was flushed with all the pleasures she had enjoyed, and she looked more beautiful than ever. Her breasts jutted out jauntily in one direction, her butt in another. She was agleam with sheer desirability, and I could hardly believe I had held her sweating and straining above me just a few minutes earlier. What I most wanted was to go back to that lounge and pick her up and start the whole night all over again.

  “Hey,” she gushed, “we had a good time, didn’t we …?”

  “Listen,” I started, but the words would not come. I felt like a naked peasant approaching the lady of the manor in all her finery.

  “Wow, make sure you wash your face. It’s a real mess,” she said with a touch of pride.

  But there was no way I could hide it, I had to go on, and I tried to make a fresh start …

  “Wait … stop!” I shouted. “You’ve got to stay … I want more …” I reached for her. She saw my erection, and under her gaze I could feel it begin to dwindle.

  “Listen, I really don’t need this,” was all she replied. And she turned towards the door.

  There was no hope left. She was simply in her own world. She was even ending it on her terms. She was making it amply clear to me. I truly was her total conquest, and she didn’t take prisoners.

  Once again she made me feel like nothing so much as a used, messy, vanquished peasant. I heard my voice, almost as though it were not mine, calling out for one last favor, imploring her …

  “At least tell me your name, give me something to remember you by …”

  “Okay, I’ll give you something. Just remember this. I did you. You didn’t do me. And we both enjoyed it. That’s all that matters.”

  She picked up her handbag and headed for the door. Her face was flushed with joy and triumph. I followed her and sought out her eyes, and these at least she granted me.

  She gave me one last puckery little kiss. I will never forget what she did next.

  She reached down and slapped me hard on my bare ass. Just to make sure I got the message, she slapped my butt even harder again, this time with a resounding thwack. Her bossy expression was at its bossiest, but I thought I caught just the slightest glint of compassion in her eyes.

  Then she opened the door and walked out of my life forever.

  Calendar Girl

  Angela Caperton

  Desi Palladino couldn’t take her eyes off April 1958.

  The calendar hung on the wall of Stu Gilbert’s tiny office at the back of the garage, where Desi brought him coffee and helped keep the books. There were calendars in the garage too, most of them with drawn or painted girls, prettier than any real woman could ever be, but the calendar on the wall of Stu’s office was the only one with photographs of real girls, one for each month of the year.

  “Whatcha lookin’ at, Desi?” Stu bustled through the open door, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. Stu Gilbert was pushing fifty, stocky, almost bald, but he smiled like a naughty twelve-year-old.

  Desi’s cheeks burned. “Nothing,” she mumbled. “Checking the delivery date for the parts you ordered last week.”

  Stu chuckled. “She’s somethin’, ain’t she?” He sighed and brushed his fingers over April’s bare stomach.

  “I thought it was against the law to show … I mean …” Desi’s mouth turned desert dry.

  “I figure somebody screwed up,” Stu said.

  Miss April’s ash blonde hair framed a plump face with ivory skin and pouty lips. Desi wished she had hair that color and the complexion to go with it. Her own hair fell in heavy black waves where it refused to curl over shoulders of pale olive, the gift of her father’s Sicilian blood. The calendar girl’s breasts curved in gentle slopes, pink-tipped and perfect, and her torso, where Stu’s finger twitched wistfully, looked firm, with just a hint of flesh around her stomach, then flattening down to a triangle of pale curls with the shadow of a line at its center.

  “I have to go, Stu,” Desi said, rising to ease past him and the scent of gasoline and tobacco he carried.

  He laughed as she reached the door. “If it bothers you, kid,” he chuckled, “I can skip to May.”

  But he didn’t take April down, and every day, all month long, Desi worked two or three hours in Stu’s office, looking at the girl on the calendar, her mind turning over and over as she thought of the real person, the girl in that picture, somewhere. She looks so happy. No, more than happy, Desi thought. She looked joyous.

  At the front of the calendar Desi read the address where it was printed, on Stafford Street in San Francisco.

  Somewhere out in California, a pretty blonde girl had stripped herself bare before a man, as open to him as a bride to her husband, sinful and brave, and so very beautiful and he had caught her exuberant beauty with his camera. Desi thought about her constantly, trying to imagine what April’s life must be like, how she had been caught in that moment, wondering if she had really been as happy as she looked.

  Stu didn’t mention the calendar again, not directly, but she saw his eyes when he looked at April and heard the catch in his breath. No man had ever breathed for Desi like that, though plenty of them had tried to get their hands in her blouse. Some days, just walking through the garage could be a gauntlet. Desi never, not for a single second of every working day, forgot she was the only antelope in a plain of lions.

  For the most part, the guys in the shop weren’t slobs or creeps. She might have dated Bobby Dridger or Jeff Culhane if they’d asked her properly, but they were the nice boys who always changed into clean shirts at the end of a greasy day and too shy even to flirt.

  On the morning of 1 May 1958, Desi clocked in early and carefully removed April from the calendar above Stu’s desk, revealing May, a redhead as beautiful as April, but far less alluring. Desi carefully placed April in an envelope and hid her on a shelf between two ledgers.

  Of course Stu’s first words when he arrived were, “Where’s April?”

  Desi pretended she didn’t hear him and Stu, God bless him, didn’t ask her again.

  All through that spring, sometimes when she was alone in her room at home, Desi stripped her clothes off and imagined posing. She would have died if Mom or Dad had ever caught her at it. She’d not been seen naked by either of them since she was six. Even her doctor had only seen her bra-covered chest.

  Only the girls in her high school gym class had seen Desi naked. Desi remembered her terror but also the excitement as she rushed through the shower hardly daring to look at the other girls, hoping for invisibility, but also realizing many of the other girls raced just as she did. Her gaze trembled and darted on the others to see if they looked at her. She felt embarrassment at being seen, like Adam and Eve ashamed of their nakedness.

  Now, Desi wondered if Adam and Eve had been excited as well as ashamed.

  Sizing herself up in her mirror, Desi thought she compared favorably to April. Her breasts were bigger, with little dark nipples instead of pink points, and her waist was tight and curved, sexily, she thought, above the swell of her hips. From the back, her bottom was high and firm, rounded and symmetrical as a perfect olive, golden where the sun had never touched her. But what held her eye and tempted her fingers was the patch of silky fur that covered her treasure – Mom’s name for her pussy.

  A real girl, Desi thought, and slipped her fingers through the satiny moss, but a goddess too, sacred to men, naked and made to be worshipped.

  Sometimes she stopped but other days, the thoughts were too much and she reached deeper, across the rough, sweet spot into the heat of her treasure, wet, sometimes dripping, desperate for a touch, or, even better, to be seen.

  Closing her eyes, before the fire burned her alive, Desi sometimes imagined the girl in the mirror was April.

  Desi usually arrived at the shop before anyone else. Stu trusted her with the books – she kept them better than he did. She took calls, handled the payroll, made coffee, and chatted with customers. Some days were slo
w, especially in the morning. During lulls she would wander to the shelf and draw the envelope from between the two ledgers where she had hidden it, slip it open with nervous fingers and stare, growing wet under her cotton panties.

  One Tuesday in late May, she had just put the envelope back between the ledgers and turned toward the doorway. Bobby Dridger stood not two feet behind her and her ragged breath lodged in her chest.

  “She’s really pretty, ain’t she?”

  Bobby looked a little like Buddy Holly with muscles. He had tawny, straight hair that he combed back in a wave and he wore black-framed glasses.

  His question vibrated the air between them a long time before Desi nodded.

  Bobby reached past her and took the envelope from its hiding place. Smiling, he shook April out and held her. April stared up at them, open, no secrets among the three of them.

  Heat rolled off Bobby like the purr of a lion in Africa. He smelled like musk and gasoline.

  “This is good stuff. It’s the light makes the difference.” He drew a line with his grease-stained finger, not quite touching the photo, along the curve of April’s breast and Desi saw what he meant, the light emerging under Bobby’s black, ragged nail.

  He looked at Desi, and then back at the picture and lightly touched it, right in the middle of April’s treasure. “Somebody missed this,” he said, much as he might have pronounced a carburetor dead. “They ought to’ve airbrushed this.”

  “What’s airbrushed?” Desi asked in a whisper.

  “It’s a retouch they do on these girls,” he said, clearly pleased she had asked the question. “It’s why none of them other girls have p— why they don’t show hair down there. Come here.” The small office shrank to a tiny matchbox. She only took two steps before she stopped, her breast almost touching Bobby’s arm. She breathed his breath when he turned and smiled and ran his finger down May’s belly, the dark half moon of his nail skirting the top of the smooth, hairless labia. “See?”

  Bobby held April out and grinned. Desi took the page from him, her cheeks burning.

  “Desi,” Bobby said, nervous, and hopeful. “I sure would like to take your picture.”

  “Just sit still, Desi. Relax.” Bobby lifted her chin and brushed a wisp of hair from her dark mane so it hung to her eyebrow. She wore a crisp white shirt and a navy blue skirt. He shot against a background of azaleas, their blooms thin and pale at the season’s end.

  Bright in a clear sky, the sun had just begun to gather shadows as it settled over the town. Bobby said it gave her an aura. In his yellow linen shirt and black chinos, he looked like a college boy.

  “Put your arm up behind under hair, baby. Look just to my right.” He stepped behind the tripod, snapping several shots as she raised her arm, aware that it made her breasts stand out against the white shirt. The straps and lace of her bra must show, she thought. What if I wasn’t wearing a bra? Her nipples stiffened.

  “Perfect, Desi. Don’t even breathe, baby.”

  The sun’s light kissed along the edge of her cheek and the nape of her neck, and pulsed between her legs. Disobedient, she turned her head the tiniest bit and smiled at Bobby, hoping her eyes and the flush she felt in her cheeks conveyed how much she wanted him.

  He looked a long moment, then disappeared behind the shutter with a steady click, click, click.

  When he showed her the pictures the next day, Desi stared at the girl painted in vivid colors, hardly believing it was her.

  “Baby, you’re amazing,” Bobby said. “There’s a dozen shots in here I could sell.”

  She leafed through the pictures. “Who’d buy them?” she asked as her treasure hummed.

  “I don’t know. Glamour mags? Popular Photography? You’re a natural, baby. The light loves you.”

  She thought about April, out in California.

  “Desi.” Bobby rubbed his chin. “You know what a camera club is?”

  She shook her head.

  “Like it sounds. A bunch of shutterbugs who get together every few weeks. We share lights and lenses and we pool our dough for a model and sometimes a studio.”

  “So?” she started, and then she felt herself blush as she understood what he was asking.

  Bobby picked her up at ten Saturday morning. She’d done as he said, and wore pretty clothes – a calf-length, pleated red skirt and a pale pink linen blouse, nearly white and nearly sheer. Beneath the blouse, she wore a silvery-grey camisole and beneath that her lightest weight white bra. Her mother hounded her to wear girdles, but Desi liked her full hips so she left the girdle at home, opting for plain white cotton panties and a garter belt the same color as the camisole. She settled on dark red lipstick and subtle lashes, and, at the last minute, she rolled on her darkest stockings, real silk in rich, charcoal gray.

  “It’s ten bucks an hour up front,” Bobby told her. “But then, if the guys like you, they tip you. There’s no funny stuff, baby. These guys are serious. They ain’t creeps.”

  “It’s very exciting,” Desi answered, feeling a little awkward and foolish, so nervous her treasure had almost soaked her panties.

  “Today’s shoot is at Ike Bentley’s place, which is cool. Bentley’s got cash. He has a permanent studio and when we use it, sometimes he springs for costumes and props. I told him about you so this ought to be fun.”

  Mr Bentley’s house sat on a big lot with a view of Lee’s Lake. A young man with a trim moustache answered the door and grinned at Bobby.

  “Hey, Charlie, this is Desi,” Bobby said as he patted the man on the shoulder.

  “I figured.” Charlie took her hand into his warm, muscular one and shook it lightly. “You’re even prettier than Bobby said.” He held her hand a little longer and looked her over with what she guessed was a photographer’s eye.

  She walked down a parquet hall to a sun-flooded room with a ceiling mostly of glass. Along one side of the big room, she glimpsed richly colored curtains, furniture, and tall flood lamps, but Charlie steered her to the men on the other side. Four of them waited among a forest of tripods.

  Bobby made the introductions. Mr Bentley, handsome for a man of his years; Gus, older too, and quiet, but he had a nice smile. Doug Spencer, dark-eyed and lean; Desi remembered him from his tenure at the garage the summer before. Wetness began to seep between her legs. Before she could squirm, Bobby introduced her to Dr Barlow. Dr Barlow, the most eligible young man in town – in spite of his wedding ring.

  Six men, some strangers, others familiar. She smiled at them, feeling the light in her eyes, the shine in her lips, the look she had seen on the beautiful girl in Bobby’s pictures. She held the tether of allure for a long moment until Mr Bentley said, “Perhaps we should get started.”

  Bentley barked directions, and Charlie moved lights and props and opened shutters and curtains. She wondered if Charlie was like a butler. A look around the room told her that Mr Bentley might be that rich.

  “We’ll start over here.” Bobby took her lightly by the arm. Her skin sensitive, suddenly thin enough to tear, burned beneath his fingers. He led her to a white wooden chair by a table where a bowl bloomed with roses. “Sit down,” he said.

  Charlie adjusted the window shutters and Desi blinked against the wash of golden sunlight.

  “Now, just do what they tell you,” Bobby said with a wink and stepped behind his camera.

  The room rustled and clanked as the tripod forest moved. The intensity of the men’s concentration as they adjusted knobs, focused, changed lenses and filters added to the warm butterflies fluttering in her core.

  What would they tell her to do?

  “Get her the roses first,” Mr Bentley said and Charlie picked her a bouquet from the bowl, eight perfect red roses that he presented with a bow and a grin.

  “Hold them,” Mr Bentley ordered, “just at your breast and inhale them.”

  She did exactly as he said, gathering the silky flowers against her pale blouse, breathing them, the sweetness a cloud in the morning, her vision misty
against the white windows, the shapes of the men in the light. She smiled, full-breathed, and her breasts pushed out in sharp peaks.

  Click, click went the cameras and after awhile, she exhaled, though air still felt shallow in her chest, a thin pool where her pounding heart swam.

  “All right,” Bentley said. “Unbutton the top three buttons of your blouse.”

  “Yes, sir,” Desi said, trying to find Bobby in the glare. She laid the roses in her lap and smiled at the cameras, her fingers at the buttons.

  Click, click.

  “Hmm,” Mr Bentley said, and Desi hated the note of disapproval she heard in his voice. “That’s not going to work as long as you are wearing a brassiere. Do you mind removing it?” He pointed to a changing screen near the colorful furnishings on the other side of the room.

  Charlie appeared like a genie to take the roses and she stood and walked to the screen, her breath faster and the line between her legs sodden and dripping. Desi paused beside the screen, looking at the lurid curtains and the sofa, like something in a sultan’s harem. She thought of the Arabian Nights and the woman who kept herself alive by telling stories, by enchanting a man with her talents.

  She thought of April and her nipples tightened.

  She shed her blouse, camisole and bra without hesitation, and before she put the blouse back on, she looked at the costumes on hangers behind the screen. Some of the shining fantasies were no bigger than her hand, and her nipples grew as hard as marbles as she imagined herself in glossy black and white, shining patches of satin. She stole a glimpse of herself in the mirror, unable to look directly at her image, the rising curves with dark rigid tips, and her face that of the woman in Bobby’s photos.

  She slipped on the sheer blouse and buttoned it to the place Mr Bentley had asked for, aware of every place the linen touched her, its cling no more than mist, but intense as a warm finger. She stepped from behind the screen, her blood pulsing in her ears, her throat, and her treasure. Almost giddy, she walked toward the men and their cameras.